The good, the bad, the ugly
Here are some bad things about the game. The multiplayer is fubar. There just isn't any way around it. It all starts with the chatrooms. If you are a Noobie and find yourself in chatroom Casual 18 and you and 2 other people are in it, and you decide you want to play a game, you'll never find one. See the problem with this is, every chatroom has a different list of player games. So if your new, and don't know this, you could get online, search for a game, and may never find one because you are not aware of the subterfuge you have to go through in order to find a decent partner. Some of you have figured this out and flood the Casual 1-2 channels and have plenty of people to play with. Its the new ones I worry about who never find anyone to play with because they have not been told to go to the most populated channels in order to find a game. No manual tells you, and possibly 99% of multplayers do not know about this. So this may be the very first time you have ever heard of this, check around see if you find it anywhere else. If a very small portion of the player base knows about this, the big wigs like Producers and Execs are probably unaware too. See they went with Gamespy to handle their online issues, but never bothered to see if everything was a smooth transition. That just left the new players out in the cold.
I simply would like to have a list of all the games and custom games and select the game I want. I hate having to select a new chatroom, look at the custom games and then repeating for every chatroom. Its insane really.
The second part was they had everyones names was in random order. But, they recently fixed this with a patch. But, they failed to do this with the Friend's list. So if you have a huge friends list and your looking to invite him to a game, it would probably be easier to select him not in your friend's list but in the chatroom list of players. So that part is still borked.
The third part is balance or rather fairness of counter units. If you decide you want to build anti-air units, well don't bother, you've probably have already lost at that point. I can build multiple anti-air, and they get owned by air. Counter units getting owned by the units they are supposed to counter. And some units, like the airforce of the USA are so superior their Apollo's can take out 4 to 1 in cost ratios of the exact same unit from Russia which is the Mig. See I find problems like this are just too many to count or to post to try and have them balance things for fairness.
I could tell you the balance is so aweful in this game, and that it may be the worst I've seen ever, but who believes that sort of trash talk. If you don't believe me, see if a Bulldog which costs 900 can take out a a Vindi which is 1200. You'll find they can't, the Vindi kills the anti-air unit with its bombs, returns to its base and easily gets repaired.
So then how do you defend against Vindi? Well you can build 10 flak troopers then hope you have enough money to make a factory and produce a bulldog or two. This of course will force you to spend 3000+2000+1800 to defend against 1200. Not exactly cost effective to build counter units in this game at all.
In most cases, it is you attack, take away their resources, and mainly just attack their resources to stop them from producting units. That is the jest of the 1v1 game. Because, counter units aren't that good, you are forced to rush rush rush, and there is NO other strategy at all other than that. The fun games come along with mirrors, since the opponent has the exact same build of units you have, you can have decent fun with that. However, even then don't expect bulldogs from the soviets to take out the hellicopter from your soviet opponent. It just won't happen. You'll have to outnumber them severly to do so, but it isn't cost effective to do so at all.
Here is my rundown, the soviet anti-air and conscripts need huge improvements. The Kirov needs a huge speed boost. The Apocolypse tank can use a nerf. The USA Apollo, Tank buster, Vindicator, and Century Bomber all need huge nerfs. The USA tanks and mirage tanks need improvements. The *** Tsunami tanks need vast improvements. Most of their units are weaker, but they are multi-terrain or they can transform from air to ground. So they should be slightly weaker, since they have that advantage. However, some of their units like Tengu can go toe to toe with the equivalent from the other nations. Like the soviet sickle is an even match for the Tengu, only they can tranform into the air. This is a disadvantage for the soviet sickle. In order to take down 1 Tengu, a soviet needs 1 sickle and 1 bullfrog. Almost 3 times the amount of resources in order to destroy the Tengu. It is game imbalances like this which makes the game completely unplayable from professional competitive gamer.
This game is more aimed at unfairness and uniqueness, rather than fun skill play in multiplayer. It is unfortunate.